RUSSIAN ISSUES IN PARISIAN 'KULTURA'

The vision of the future Polish-Russian relations became one of the key issues raised in the Paris emigration magazine 'Kultura'. As early as 1948, the magazine published extracts from Russian writers' works and literary-critical sketches devoted to Russian literature. The crucial project in this first phase of activities to be aimed at Polish-Russian reconciliation was a special number of 'Kultura' in Russian. The basic aim of the Russian issue was to undertake the dialogue between the Polish and Russian intellectuals. An overriding objective of this project was an attempt to present the problem in the context of mutual Polish-Russian political and cultural relations. The special number devoted to the Polish-Russian relations met with a wide response from the Russian diaspora in the USA and Germany. Emigration magazines published in New York and Munich such as 'Novyi Zhurnal', 'Novoe Russkoe Slovo', and 'Posev' in a friendly way responded to the initiative undertaken by 'Kultura' to promote dialogue. After 1960, the Literary Institute published two other issues in Russian, in 1971 and 1981 accordingly. The problem of the Polish-Russian relations raised by Jerzy Giedroyc - Editor-in-Chief of 'Kultura' - significantly influenced the restoration of bilateral relations. As a result the question of the Polish-Russian relations came to be considered in a different context: a tradition free of stereotypes, historical complexes, and of the mutual distrust sustained throughout history.